Stephen Booth - The kill call

‘And he was up there on Tuesday morning?’

‘Mum didn’t know that for certain,’ said Hitchens. ‘But she remembers him coming home early that day and behaving oddly. She says he tried to make out he had ’flu, but she wasn’t fooled. Mothers rarely are, no matter what they tell us to our faces.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Anyway, young Sean is going to get a shock when he realizes his mum knew what he was up to all along.’

‘But why didn’t she call as soon as she saw the appeals?’ asked Fry.

‘Well, being of a suspicious nature but not wanting to think the worst of her beloved son without proof, she waited until he was out of the house and took a gander in his room. And she turned up the wallet in his underwear drawer.’

Fry looked at the plastic evidence bag. ‘Patrick Rawson’s wallet?’

‘Yes. And here are his credit and debit cards. Golf club membership. A pocket full of business cards — there might be some useful contacts there that we haven’t spoken to yet. Oh, and just under five hundred pounds in cash.’

‘Five hundred?’

‘For those last-minute cash deals, I suppose.’

‘I wonder if Crabbe spent any?’

‘Impossible to tell. We’ll have to ask him. We can’t find any record of him attempting to use the cards, so maybe he had the sense to hang on to the cash until things died down.’

‘If he had that amount of sense, why didn’t he get rid of the wallet?’ said Fry.

Hitchens shook his head. ‘No idea. We’ve seized the clothes Sean was wearing on Tuesday morning, and they’ve gone for forensics. Mum says he changed as soon as he came home that day, and showered. If we find Patrick Rawson’s blood on his clothes, it will look very bad for him.’

‘Does he have any previous?’

‘No, he’s clean. Not even a bit of juvenile on his record. Actually, he doesn’t seem the type from what I saw of him. Long hair, and a bit dreamy looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote poetry. You know the sort of kid.’

‘An emo?’

‘Is that what they call them?’

‘Emos are more likely to kill themselves than anybody else,’ said Fry. ‘Did Mrs Crabbe understand what she was implicating him in?’

‘She must have done, surely?’ said Hitchens. ‘Here’s his custody record anyway, Diane. The name is Sean Crabbe, aged twenty, student. He’s local, too — so his voice could well match the 999 call.’

Fry sat up straighter. ‘You want me to do the interview, sir?’

‘Well, why not?’

Sean Crabbe sat in Interview Room One, a desperately hangdog expression on his face. He was staring down at his hands, which gripped the edge of the table. His knuckles were white, a sign of the tension he was under.

If he’d been in any doubt about the seriousness of the charges he might face, he had been enlightened by his brief, who looked almost as anxious as Crabbe.

‘It wasn’t me who killed him,’ was the young man’s first sentence when Fry sat down opposite him and started the tapes.

‘Killed who, Sean?’ asked Fry, hoping this was going to be an easy one.

‘The man in the hut. The dead man.’

Fry reminded herself that the 999 call had reported a dead body in the abandoned hut. That was despite the fact that Patrick Rawson had clearly not been dead at the time, since he’d recovered sufficiently to run a few hundred yards across the adjoining fields. Of course, that didn’t preclude Sean Crabbe from being responsible for his death.

‘You’d better tell us about it, Sean. From the start.’

He glanced at his solicitor, and Fry could sense that they’d agreed what Sean would say — and perhaps what he wouldn’t. But she’d encountered this brief before, he was pretty straight. Besides, Sean Crabbe seemed more than ready to tell his story.

‘It was the sight of the phone, just lying there. That was what did it. I couldn’t resist picking it up. It was really smart, you see — a Sony Ericsson.’ He leaned forward and stared at Fry to see if she understood. ‘It happens all the time, people nicking phones. I’ve had two nicked in the last year. All my mates have, too. I thought it would be all right, just to — you know, take one back.’

‘Sean, I don’t think you’ve started from the beginning, like I asked you,’ said Fry.

‘What?’

‘Let’s begin with why you went up to the old agricultural research centre on Longstone Moor on Tuesday morning. I need to know what you were doing there in the first place.’

Sean hesitated. ‘The old huts are just somewhere I go, to be on my own. There was no other reason.’

‘Were you going there to meet someone?’

‘No. It was like I just said.’

‘But someone else was there,’ insisted Fry.

‘Just… well, just the dead man.’

‘His name is Patrick Rawson. And he was alive when you first saw him, Sean.’

‘He was dying, though. He was practically dead. And I wasn’t responsible for that.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘I’m telling you the truth.’

Fry sat back in surprise. He almost looked as though he was going to cry. Twenty years old, and he was upset by somebody speaking to him a bit sharply. What was it the DI had said? He didn’t look the type. Sean Crabbe was the kind of boy who ought to be writing poetry somewhere. The kind who wanted to be on his own, and wouldn’t like an intrusion into his little hideaway. She decided to try a different tack.

‘You said the old huts are just somewhere you go, Sean. So you go up there often, do you?’

He ran a hand across his face, though there weren’t actually any tears that Fry could see.

‘Quite often. Whenever I get the chance.’

‘Because it’s somewhere you can be on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you ever meet anyone up there?’

‘No, never. No one goes there, except me.’

Fry nodded. ‘So you must have been annoyed when you saw Mr Rawson arrive.’

Sean looked confused. ‘I told you.’

‘No, you didn’t, Sean.’

‘I told you, I didn’t see him arrive. He was already nearly dead when I saw him.’

The duty solicitor was starting to get restless. The same question asked in a different way could often get a result. But not with Sean Crabbe.

‘Sean, you were in possession of Mr Rawson’s wallet. So we know you robbed him. Didn’t you also hit him over the head?’

Now he was really anxious.

‘No. I would never do that. He was just lying there in the hut. I never even heard anything. I didn’t know anyone else was around until I smelled something. And it was his aftershave. He was wearing a really strong aftershave. He was lying near the back door of the big hut, and he had blood coming from his head.’

‘And what did you do, Sean?’

‘I took his phone. It was on the floor, as if he’d been trying to use it.’ He glanced at the solicitor, who nodded. ‘And then I took his wallet.’

Sean looked so ashamed when he got out the last part of his admission that Fry didn’t know what to say for a moment.

‘Go on. What next?’

‘I got out of there, scarpered. I was scared of getting caught.’

‘Oh, were you? What did you do with the phone?’

His shoulders slumped with embarrassment. ‘I realized after a minute or two that it was stupid to have taken it. They can trace you by a phone, can’t they?’

‘Right. But you made a call on it, didn’t you. Sean?’

‘I dialled 999 and told them there was a body.’

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Fry. Despite the conclusion she was gradually arriving at, this was a question she really wanted to know the answer to.

Sean sighed. ‘I had this horrible thought. Like I said, no one else ever goes up there. Not ever. And I had this awful idea that the next time I went up to the huts, that man would still be there, lying dead on the floor. Rotting. Because no one had found him.’